INTELLECTUAL DISABILITY

Motivating Local Businesses to Employ Young People with Intellectual Disabilities

[National Australia, University of Queensland]

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION3

PROBLEM STATEMENT4

PURPOSE OF THE STUDY5

DOWN SYNDORME ASSOCIATION OF QUEENSLAND INC.5

PRESENT CONCEPT OF INTELLECTUAL DISABILITIES6

DIAGNOSTIC CRITERIA FOR INTELLECTUAL DISABILITIES8

Significant Limitation in General Intellectual Functioning8

Significant Limitations in Adaptive Functioning which Exist Concurrently with Intellectual Limitations8

ID Should Manifest Itself9

PROCESS OF EVALUATION OF MENTAL RETARDATION10

Basic Assumptions in the Process of Evaluation10

Evaluation of Intelligence Limitation12

EVALUATION OF LIMITATION IN ADAPTIVE FUNCTIONING13

Evaluation of Psycho-Emotional Problems15

FUTURE PERSPECTIVES AND CONCLUSIONS19

REFERENCES22

Introduction

Intellectual Disability (ID) comprises a heterogeneous group of people, who in their school years are singled out as having general difficulty in learning, and in adult life as having limitations in their independent community functioning. The present entry describes how to assess intelligence and cognitive processes, adaptive skills and social functioning and behavioural problems in persons with ID. Australians use ID in addition to mental retardation because it is currently the broadly accepted scientific definition for identifying the population group diagnosed with adaptive and intellectual limitations. The term 'mental deficiency' was widely used during the 1970s and beginning of the 1980s, but by the second half of the 1980s it had been replaced by 'mental retardation'. Nowadays, the preferred term for professionals and scholars worldwide is 'ID'.

Like most forms of disability, ID has gone under many names. At various times, and in various countries, people judged to have some type of difficulty with learning and abstract thought have been called fools, natural fools, idiots, cretins, aments, simpletons, imbeciles, and morons; they have been described also as fatuous, feebleminded, mentally defective, mentally retarded, learning disabled, and developmentally disabled. The question arises as to whether there is something stable, something physiologically persistent, behind those terms and the historical contexts within which their usage arose and declined. Regardless of how one answers that question, the need for a history of ID that recognises the complexity of interaction between the name and the thing being named is clear.

ID cannot be understood as a characteristic of the individual, despite the fact that it has traditionally been classified as a medical or psychiatric disorder. Since 1992, with the significant paradigm shift in the concept of mental retardation proposed by the American Association on Mental Retardation (AAMR) (Luckasson et al., 1992), it has been considered that mental retardation refers to substantial limitations in present functioning. This means that employers are now emphasising individuals' functioning instead of their characteristics. Individuals' functioning is understood as the result of the adjustment between personal abilities and characteristics, and environmental expectations. Consequently assessment should not focus as much on the individual as on the environment around him.

Problem Statement

The problem may be particularly true for researcher to motivate local businesses to employ young people with intellectual disabilities, because intellectual disabilities covers a variety of subjects under a single shadow.

Purpose of the study

The main purpose of this study is to discuss issues related to motivating local businesses to employ young people with intellectual disabilities.

Down Syndorme Association of Queensland Inc.

The Mission of the DSAQ ...